Some students at The University of the West Indies (UWI) Mona Campus are now panicking over the prospect that they may not be able to sit their final exams if hundreds of thousands of dollars owed in tuition and other fees to the institution are not paid in just over a week.

“Not sitting our exams means that we are further away from achieving our dreams than the first day we sat down for a class on the Mona campus,” said Alaina Reid, a third-year law student who was speaking for other affected students. “…We are accustomed to the policy of the withholding of degrees, grades and transcripts as a consequence of non-payment of fees (but not before exams).”

“This policy, we aver is not proportionate,” she said in an anxious e-mail sent to the Jamaica Observer.

But director of marketing and communications at The UWI, Dr Carroll Edwards, insisted that the policy was not new, and that students were repeatedly notified from as far back as July last year.

“They were told then (and) again a reminder went out in September, then another reminder in either December or January. So they know that this is the situation. There are different impacts on students who are continuing versus those who are completing their studies. Once you’re in your final semester then there is no other time in which you can settle the fee. This is it,” she told the

Observer.

Edwards said as far as she was aware most final-year students had settled their fees, and that for those who could not pay in full there were payment plans. But it is too late for those who had no arrangement in place.

“I don’t think anybody can do a payment plan now. The issue would arise for students who have not made payments and don’t have a payment plan in place,” she said, noting that this would not apply to the majority of final-year students.

She said students are usually allowed to pay for one semester “in the back”, but those in their final semester have no other opportunity to pay, “The university allows you to pay for a semester behind – meaning you can be registered in this semester, but in order to be registered, you have to pay all of last semester’s fees. If you’re a finalising student there is no further semester in which you can owe fees; so in order to sit exams, you have to settle your fees,” she said.

Reid said personally she was unaware of the policy prior to an advisory issued at the end of March by the campus registrar and stressed that there had always been some degree of leniency. “I have spoken to other people, and they have said that it has been a policy of the UWI, but people have always been able to take their exams…The point is people have always been able to sit their exams. When you send an advisory like this a couple weeks before exams it stresses out people. I’ve heard people saying they can’t focus”, adding that at least one faculty is preparing a petition to plead a case to UWI’s administration.

According to The UWI’s regulations governing the sitting of final examinations for the second semester of 2016-2017, all undergraduate and postgraduate students with balances owed — excluding residence fees — will not be allowed to sit examinations. The university says that “finalising students must pay all outstanding fees, including residence fees, in full by Tuesday, April 18, in order to prevent the removal of their courses”.

The regulations explicitly stated that: “Official Payment Plans are no longer available. Entrance to each examination room will be allowed only to students who are duly registered for the course(s) scheduled for the examination(s) being held there.”

Reid argued that final-year students would in fact be prevented from sitting their finals since removal of courses would automatically result in them being barred from the exams. “If you don’t pay everything by April 18, and your courses are removed, then you are de-registered basically, so you won’t be able to sit the exams. If they remove your courses, you wouldn’t be registered for the exam,” the distraught student said.